2023-08-11 22:28:18
Extreme heat affects not only the body but also the mind (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)
The world is in the throes of an extreme heat wave. To the logical increase in temperature in the boreal summer, was added the fact that a large part of South America had a winter that was almost like a summer. And this not only affects the body, but also the mind.
The month of July 2023 broke all records in the history of meteorology. The global average temperature during last July was confirmed to be the highest recorded for any month on Earth, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
While extremely hot and humid conditions can cause great physical discomfort, some research has focused on the effects they can have on our mental well-being as well. strongly associated Between rising temperatures and various kinds of mental health problems, the increase of the suicidesof crimes violent y the aggressions, the visits to the room of emergencies, hospitalizations by mental disorders y The deathsespecially among people with schizophreniadementia, psychosis and substance use.
High temperatures are rising around the world (WWO)
For every degree Celsius (or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) that the temperature increases, scientists have estimated that there is an increase of almost 5 percent. at risk of death among patients with psychosis, dementia, or substance use. The researchers reported a 0.7 percent increase in suicides related to rising temperatures, and a 4 to 6 percent increase in interpersonal violenceincluding the homicides.
“Across the spectrum of mental health, we see that extreme heat is harmful to mental well-being,” said Nick Obradovich, a computational sociologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and co-author of a study that looked at the risks of climate change. for mental health.
This connection is not limited to periods of high temperatures, as it is also seen in people who live in regions with consistently hot weather (although, of course, mental health trends can also depend on many factors other than temperature).
Scientists still haven’t figured out what causes this phenomenon, and they don’t even know if heat itself can cause changes in the brain that produce these effects. In any case, according to the experts, it is clear that oppressive heat has something to do with worse mental health.
High temperatures are associated with more mental health problems (Getty)
The evidence seems to indicate that “extreme temperatures can influence everything from your everyday mood to the likelihood of experiencing a serious mental health crisis,” Obradovich said. A study published in the scientific journal JAMA Psychiatry last year, examined the medical records of more than 2.2 million adults who visited the emergency room in 2,775 U.S. counties between 2010 and 2019.
The authors found that there were regarding 8% more emergency department visits for mental health problems on the hottest days of summer than on the warmest days. Emergency room visits for problems such as self-harm, substance use, anxiety, mood disorders and schizophrenia increased at the same rate as temperature. This trend is “fairly consistent for men and women, for adults of all ages, and for residents across the United States,” said Amruta Nori-Sarma, an environmental health scientist with the Boston University School of Public Health. and is a co-author of the study.
Other research has revealed that a rise in temperature may trigger temporary relapses in people with bipolar disorder, and that increased exposure to sunlight may increase the risk of manic episodes. High temperatures have also been linked to the death of people with schizophrenia and other mental health conditions.
A man talks on his mobile next to a thermometer that reads 44º during a day of red alert for high temperatures, in the city of Murcia, Murcia (Spain). (Edu Botella – Europa Press)
The heat not only feed feelings such as irritability and anger, but it also seems exacerbate mental illnesssuch as anxiety, schizophrenia and depression. older adults , teenagers and people with pre-existing mental illnesses are particularly vulnerable, as are people who do not they have housing or are they from socioeconomic level lower .
Previous data collected through surveys of more than 1.9 million Americans between 2008 and 2013 revealed that on days when temperatures exceeded 21 degrees Celsius, a higher proportion of respondents felt their levels of joy and happiness were affected, in addition to of experiencing more stress, anger and fatigue than on days when temperatures hovered between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius. These associations were especially strong when temperatures exceeded 32 degrees Celsius, the authors noted.
In addition, a landmark study published in JAMA last year analyzed data from more than two million people with private insurance and found that visits to America’s emergency departments for mental illness were significantly higher during the five or six hottest days of summer, compared to the coolest days of the same season.
A security guard wearing an electric fan around his neck wipes off sweat on a hot day in Beijing, Monday, July 3, 2023. Heavy flooding displaced thousands of people in China as the capital took a brief respite from a scorching heat. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
“When we’re not comfortable, we don’t perform at our best,” explained Munro Cullum, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The discomfort caused by heat, as well as the energy the body expends to stay cool, can lead to an overall drop in resilience. This makes it harder to bear the agitation, irritation and pain, he said.
On top of that, our bodies are used to a certain basic level of stress, said Martin Paulus, chief scientific officer and president of the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who collaborated with Obradovich on the 2018 study.
When the body tries to regulate its temperature during a heat wave, he explained, it is subjected to increased pressure, which causes more stress and inflammation. Those who already suffer from mental health conditions may be especially vulnerable to the additional stress generated by heat, which might cause exaggerated symptoms, she noted.
In the midst of global trends of extreme heat, countries like Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Brazil face atypical temperatures for the winter season.
“As for what happens inside the brain when there are episodes of extreme heat, it’s hard to study,” Paulus said. In the laboratory, it is possible to do experiments to find out what mechanisms the brain and the rest of the body apply to withstand a few minutes, or even a few hours, of high temperatures, but it is not possible to do a study of days, weeks or months, and precisely those prolonged exposures are important to understand the effects that climate change can have on us in the long term.
However, the fact that this relationship between heat and mental health is so consistent in people around the world suggests that heat does something to the brain, Nori-Sarma said. Some researchers have hypothesized that the heat might cause an imbalance in brain signals or some inflammation.
Another leading theory holds that interrupted sleep from heat might aggravate some mental health symptoms. “Hot nights significantly affect sleep. And we know, thanks to a large body of articles on psychology and psychiatry, that lack of sleep, difficulties with sleep, and insomnia, over time, have a very close relationship with worse mental health conditions. It is possible that the explanation for the effect of heat on mental health is a combination of these different theories,” Obradovich asserted.
Extreme heat advisory in Phoenix, Ariz., on July 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Matt York)
“We also cannot forget the anxiety due to the weather. Fires and heat waves, among other weather-related events, are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change. As global warming worsens, ecological anxiety might exacerbate other symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression, or even disaster-related post-traumatic stress symptoms,” Paulus said.
Also, some people are more vulnerable to heat than others. In the 2018 study, Obradovich and Paulus’s team found that those with low incomes experienced worse mental health effects from heat than higher-income people, with women experiencing worse effects than men. With these data combined, they found that the effect of heat on the mental health of low-income women might be quantified as twice that suffered by high-income men.
Keep reading:
“Non-human temperatures”: what are the 5 major effects of climate change on health The oceans break temperature records and affect marine species like fires Faced with heat waves in Europe and the US, what will summer be like in the Argentina and the Southern Cone?
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